[This
book review has not been published elsewhere, but is instead being published
directly to Dwight Murphey’s collected writings
website in August 2013.]

Book Review

The 9/11 Toronto Report: International
Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001

James
Gourley, editor

International Center for 9/11 Studies, 2013

There are a number of pivotal events
and personalities about which a thick crust of disinformation prevails,
obscuring our understanding of the history of our time.It is improbable that anything even remotely
resembling the complete truth will ever come out about them.This is a predicament with the most profound
implications.[1]

One of these is the events of
September 11, 2001.Much that has
happened in world affairs since that date has been justified or brought into
play because of its trauma.As time goes
by, it may continue to be the turning point of the twenty-first century, just
as World War I arguably was for the twentieth.[2]

Since that fateful day more than a
decade ago, an official account has held by far the dominant position,
reinforced by government, the major media, and a trusting and unquestioning
public.This sets forth a conspiracy
theory centered around nineteen airplane hijackers affiliated with
al-Qaeda.What is less well known is
that there has been a substantial number of highly intelligent and (almost
without exception) objectively-minded observers, many of them with advanced
technical training and experience, who have found the conventional account
impossible to believe.Only a few of
them presume to have an alternative explanation of what really happened, but
what they do believe is that a monstrous falsehood, with all its damaging
consequences, has been cemented in place.

This review cannot undertake, of
course, to present the case for their skepticism, although we will necessarily
touch on some of its elements in discussing this book.The details of their analysis can easily be
found on the Internet, where a search for “9/11 Truth” will lead to a
remarkable collection of information and analysis accumulated by such groups as
“Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” “Scientists for 9/11 Truth,” “Fire
Fighters for 9/11 Truth,” “Pilots for 9/11 Truth,” and “Scholars for 9/11
Truth.”It isn’t too much to say that no
one should presume to have a fixed opinion about what happened on 9/11 without
seriously studying that material.

The attacks’ tenth anniversary in 2011
offered an occasion for a large gathering of the skeptics at Ryerson University
in Toronto to hold what they called “International Hearings on the Events of
September 11, 2001” and to issue the Report that is the subject of this
review.The charge they gave to the
Hearings was to “bring to light the most substantial evidence… demonstrating
that there is the need for a new, independent and international
investigation….”A number of “witnesses”
(really analysts and commentators) presented varied aspects of the
material.We won’t list them all, but it
is worth noting that their credentials are of the sort to command attention: a
professional engineer with 28 years of experience; a retired chemistry
professor who was “lead author of the peer-reviewed scientific papertitled ‘Active Thermitic
Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 WTC[3] Catastrophe’”; a “former
scientist at Underwriter Laboratories… fired by UL in 2004 for publicly asking
questions about the WTC investigation being conducted by the National Institute
of Standards and Technology”; more than one professor of economics; former U.S.
Senator Mike Gravel; -- and others of like standing.

Four impressive individuals served as a panel of
“jurors” who provide evaluations at the end of the Report.These were FerdinandoImposimato, a jurist who is the Honorary President of
the Supreme Court of Italy and who has presided over major terrorism or
Mafia-related cases such as the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II;
Herbert Jenkins, a psychology professor emeritus at McMaster University;
Richard B. Lee, an anthropology professor emeritus at the University of
Toronto; and David Johnson, a professor emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning
at the University of Tennessee. Each of these has a record of scholarly
achievement recounted in the Report but which we will pass over here.The bulk of the Report consists of 14
chapters containing, respectively, the contributions of the Hearings’
participants.

The Report assembles an impressive amount of
information, but those who planned the Toronto event knew that it would have
been much more valuable intellectually if it had been able to provide a venue
for a direct clash of opposing points of view.To lay out the skeptics’ evidence and analysis, then to see how that
would be confuted by experts defending the official account, and then to have
them cross-examine each other until each point reached its conclusion, would be
a priceless give-and-take on a matter of enormous importance.However, this was not to be.The editor of the Report, James Gourley, writes that “NIST [the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, which conducted investigations of the collapse of the
three WTC buildings] and the 9/11 Commission members had been invited several
times to participate in the Hearings, but they declined to do so.”

This give-and-take can take place, of course, outside
a conference such as that in Toronto.It’s possible that those who declined to present support for the
official account of 9/11 thought they would be “walking into a lion’s den,” and
had no inclination to take on what they might have anticipated was a hostile
environment.If so, one would hope they
would provide their refutation in convincing detail in separate books,
articles, governmental reports, or other media.One of the things that makes the skepticism about 9/11 compelling is
that this refutation has never been given.It needs to be, because simply to ignore the skeptics’ case is
untenable.The reason it is untenable is
that the case amasses evidence on a number of points that build a strong prima facie case that the official
account is false.Popular Mechanics magazine is one source that has ventured a
refutation, but our review of its book found that it rather obviously fails to
come to grips with the issues.[4]

It is, of course, incumbent primarily upon the U.S.
federal government to make a coherent and credible accounting.This has not occurred, and there has been
little inclination in Congress and in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama
administrations to remove the grounds for doubt.From the very beginning, there was
considerable reluctance to investigate at all.We are told that Vice President Cheney opposed an inquiry, that
initially only $3 million was allocated to the 9/11 Commission (as compared to
$50 million for the earlier investigation of the Challenger explosion), and
that Henry Kissinger was appointed chairman of the Commission but resigned when
asked if he had “any Saudi clients by the name of bin Laden.”The Commission report that eventually
emerged ignored vitally important evidence, as witness that “the Commission did
not even mention the fact that World Trade Center 7 [a 47-story skyscraper],
which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed….”The NIST did address the WTC7 issue, but based its analysis entirely on
a computer model, without any physical testing, and ignored the eyewitness
accounts of explosions in that and the other two WTC buildings.The computer model is subject to serious question,
since it “does not match what is seen in WTC7 collapse videos.”In an attempt to resolve these difficulties,
“structural engineer Ron Brookman made a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request to NIST in 2009 asking for the calculations and
analysis… NIST’s official response was that release of that information might
jeopardize public safety.”(NIST didn’t
deal with the Pentagon attack, where there was a parallel situation; the
Hearings say there were witnesses to, and other proof of, explosions at the
Pentagon both before and after the building was hit.)The Toronto Hearings are replete with other
accounts of on-going obfuscation and of the destruction or disappearance of
evidence.

Readers will find far more in the 9/11 Toronto Report than we have been able to include here.For those new to the subject, it is one of
the good places to start.There are,
however, shortcomings that keep it from being the perfect source, so that a
better place to start, say, may be with David Ray Griffin’s bookDebunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and
Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory.The
editors of the Journal of 9/11 Studies have
a link for “Beginners” on the Journal’s home page, and a list of recommended
sources appears there for people who are just starting to study the subject.

Here are limitations, and some problems, we see:

Even though the “charge” given to the Hearings was to “bring
to light the most substantial evidence,” the various presentations are not
evidence-centered per se, but are
rather summary statements of the factual issues that the evidence, when
examined in detail, pertains to.For
example, we have seen that the Report says there were many eyewitness accounts
of explosions in the buildings, pointing to planned demolition.It would take a book in itself to publish the
interviews that give those accounts, and so it is too much to expect them to be
in the Report.Readers should know that
the primary evidence underlying the issues raised in the Report is to be found
elsewhere in the now-vast9/11
literature, including the peer-reviewed articles in the journal just referred
to.

The scholarly objectivity of most of the contributors should
have a broad appeal to thoughtful people of any ideological persuasion.Certainly there is as much reason for
“conservatives” or others who are not on the left to care about the truth as
for others to do so.Most of those
participating in the Hearings are fully acceptable from that standpoint.The “9/11 Truth” movement was ill-served,
then, when a couple of the “witnesses” at the Hearings presented a distinctly
leftist perspective, dressed in all the trappings of social science (or we
might more accurately say “pseudo-social science”).Their ideology appeared in a number of ways,
such as in a highly selective list of “abuses” of democracy (leaving out many
that someone on the Left would be inclined not to see) and in insupportable
imputations against individuals who are standard villains in the Left’s
worldview.Readers who are not “of the
Left” will be turned away by such a bias.This is unfortunate for the diverse people who care about the search for
truth about 9/11.

Although there is an occasional mention of the Obama
administration, the existence of a “cover-up” by the George W. Bush
administration is often mentioned.Now
that Barack Obama has been president of the United States for five years
without his administration overturning the obfuscations and silence, however,
one would think there would be growing anger at that fact.Its lack is, again, unfortunate, since
political double standards weaken rather than strengthen the ability of the
movement to attract support.

To hold out persistently against a dominant consensus, as
the “9/11 Truthers” have, in a world where most
people prefer to “go along to get along,” speaks well for the character of
those who have pressed the issue.Diligence, personal courage, analytical skill, mental independence and
refusal to toe the mark of received opinion – all of these have been a part of
it.It is important for us to point
these out because there is a major remaining criticism: that the Hearings
rather conspicuously avoided all mention of certain evidence that points to the
possible involvement of the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad.Any complete
survey of the evidence must include a consideration of the events surrounding
what is known as “the five dancing Israelis.”[5]
The involvement of the Mossad is suggested not just
by that episode, but by the fact that a collaboration between the United States
and Israeli governments would be a compelling explanation for how so much
secrecy has been able to be maintained and for why no one in the participating
elements has been willing to come forward as a “whistleblower” over all these
years.The decades-long suppression of
facts about the 1967 Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty[6]
illustrates how totally fearful Americans are when it comes to speaking up in
any way critical of so powerful an element.That fear might well be paralyzing for anyone who would face the powers
behind 9/11.We don’t know whether the Mossad was involved in 9/11 or not, and shouldn’t be taken
as asserting that it was; but it does seem clear that those who seek the truth
should not indulge any taboo, no matter how powerful, that places potentially
important evidence off limits.

The participants in the Hearings, and others among the 9/11
skeptics, sound a hopeful note when they call for a “new, independent and
international investigation.”They are
not, for the most part, prepared to assert and prove “what really happened,” so
what they are left with, if they are optimists, is the hope for a definitive
inquiry that will dispel the fog and will command the ascent of most all
thoughtful people.Underneath their
optimism, however, there must be a nagging suspicion that “it’s not going to
happen.”If that suspicion is correct,
and we think it is, what the “Truthers” are left with
is to do more of what they have been doing all along: to continue to amass
evidence and analysis, and to get more and more people to think about it.It is only if and when that succeeds that the
“tipping point” will be reached at which “full disclosure” takes the place of
cover-up in official circles.

Dwight D. Murphey

[1]One of the
more important implications has to do with which just how much true “democracy”
there is if the voting public lives behind a veil of ignorance.

[2]In referring
to world affairs, we are thinking of the more obvious outward events
politically and militarily, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “war
against terror,” and the growth of the “security state” in the United
States.Those who are mindful, however,
of Leo Tolstoy’s principal message in War
and Peace, that there are great subterranean movements that make the outward
events pale in importance, will realize that such things as cybernetics, the
global market, the seismic shifts in populations, the on-rush of technology,
and perhaps much else are also historically definitive factors.

[3]“WTC” stands
for the“World Trade Center” in New York
City.Although many people don’t know
it, there were three WTC skyscrapers that collapsed on 9/11, not just the two
that were hit by airplanes.

[4]See our
review on www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info, where it appears as BR121 (i.e., book review
121).It is a combined review of three
books on the 9/11 controversy: ThePopular Mechanics book, a David Ray
Griffin book responding to Popular
Mechanics, and the NIST "Final
Report" on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.It waspublished in the Winter 2008 issue of this Journal, pp. 506-512, under
the title "9/11 Theories: A Triple Book Review.".

[5]Pro’s and
con’s on this issue can be found by Googling “five
dancing Israelis.”

[6]See our
review of James Scott’s The Attack on the
Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Attack on a U.S. Spy Ship,
which appears as BR135 (i.e. book review 135) on
www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info